eye, looking towards the earth through her flowing locks, and riding through the dumb and deserted streets, like an angelic spirit.

It was an honorable superstition in that part of the country, that a man who ventured to look at the fair saviour of his native town, was said to have been struck blind. But the vulgar use to which this superstition has been turned by some writers of late times, is not so honorable. The whole story is as unvulgar and as sweetly serious as can be conceived.

Drayton has not made so much of this subject as might have been expected; yet what he says is said well and earnestly:

-Coventry at length

From her small mean regard, recovered state and strength;
By Leofric her lord, yet in base bondage held,

The people from her marts by tollage were expelled:
Whose duchess which desired this tribute to release,

Their freedom often begged. The duke, to make her cease,
Told her, that if she would his loss so far enforce,
His will was, she should ride stark naked upon a horse
By daylight through the street: which certainly he thought
In her heroic breast so deeply would have wrought,
That in her former suit she would have left to deal.

But that most princely dame, as one devoured with zeal,
Went on, and by that mean the city clearly freed.

CHAPTER VI.

Pleasant Memories connected with various parts of the Metropolis.

ONE of the best secrets of enjoyment is the art of cultivating pleasant associations. It is an art that of necessity increases with the stock of our knowledge; and though in acquiring our knowledge we must encounter disagreeable associations also, yet if we secure a reasonable quantity of health by the way, these will be far less in number than the agreeable ones: for unless the circumstances which gave rise to the associations press upon us, it is only for want of health that the power of throwing off these burdensome images becomes suspended.

And the beauty of this art is, that it does not insist upon pleasant materials to work on. Nor indeed does health. Health will give us a vague sense of delight in the midst of objects that would teaze and oppress us during sickness. But healthy association peoples this vague sense with agreeable images. It will comfort us, even when a painful sympathy with the distresses of others becomes a part of the very health of our minds. For instance, we can never go through St. Giles's, but the sense of the extravagant inequalities in human condition presses more forcibly upon us; and yet some pleasant images are at hand, even there, to refresh it. They do not displace the others so as to injure the sense of public duty which they excite; they only serve to keep our spirits fresh for their task, and hinder them from running into desperation or hopelessness. In St. Giles's church lie Chapman, the earliest and best translator of Homer; and Andrew Marvell, the wit and patriot, whose poverty Charles the Second could not bribe. We are sure to think of these two men, and of all the good and pleasure they have done to the world, as of the less happy objects about us. The steeple of the church itself, too, is a handsome one; and there is a flock of pigeons in that neighbor

hood, which we have stood with great pleasure to see careering about it of a fine afternoon, when a western wind had swept back the smoke towards the city, and showed the white of the stone steeple piercing up into a blue sky. So much for St. Giles's, whose very name is a nuisance with some. It is dangerous to speak disrespectfully of old districts. Who would suppose that the Borough was the most classical ground in the metropolis! And yet it is undoubtedly so. The Globe theatre was there, of which Shakspeare himself was the proprietor, and for which he wrote some of his plays. Globe-lane, in which it stood, is still extant, we believe, under that name. It is probable that he lived near it: it is certain that he must have been much there. It is also certain that on the Borough side of the river, then and still called the Bank-side, in the same lodging, having the same wardrobe, and some say with other participations more remarkable, lived Beaumont and Fletcher. In the Borough, also, at St. Saviour's, lie Fletcher and Massinger in one grave; in the same church, under a monument and effigy, lies Chaucer's contemporary, Gower; and from an inn in the Borough, the existence of which is still boasted, and the site pointed out by a picture and inscription, Chaucer sets out his pilgrims and himself on their famous road to Canterbury.

To return over the water, who would expect anything poetical from East Smithfield? Yet there was born the most poetical even of the poets, Spenser. Pope was born within the sound of Bow-bell, in a street no less anti-poetical than Lombard-street. Gray was born in Cornhill; and Milton in Bread-street, Cheapside. The presence of the same great poet and patriot has given happy memories to many parts of the metropolis. He lived in St. Bride's Church-yard, Fleet-street; in Aldersgatestreet, in Jewin-street, in Barbican, in Bartholomew-close; in Holborn, looking back to Lincoln's-inn-Fields; in Holborn, near Red Lion square; in Scotland-yard; in a house looking to St. James's Park, now belonging to an eminent writer on legislation, and lately occupied by a celebrated critic and metaphysician;t and he died in the Artillery-walk, Bunhillfields; and was buried in St. Giles's, Cripplegate.

*

Ben Jonson, who was born in "Hartshorne-lane, near Charing-cross," was at one time "master" of a theatre in Barbican. He appears also to have visited a tavern called the Sun and Moon, in Aldersgate-street; and is known to have frequented, with Beaumont and others, the famous one called the Mermaid, which was in Cornhill. Beaumont, writing to him from the country, in an epistle full of jovial wit, says,

The sun, which doth the greatest comfort bring
To absent friends, because the self-same thing
They know they see, however absent, is
Here our best haymaker: forgive me this:
It is our country style:-In this warm shine
I lie, and dream of your full Mermaid wine.

Methinks the little wit I had, is lost,
Since I saw you; for wit is like a rest
Held up at tennis, which men do the best

With the best gamesters.

What things have we seen

Done at the Mermaid! Hard words that have been

So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,

As if that every one from whom they came

Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,

And had resolved to live a fool the rest

Of his dull life. Then, when there hath been thrown

Wit, able enough to justify the town

For three days past,-wit, that might warrant be

For the whole city to talk foolishly

Till that were cancelled, and when that was gone,

We left an air behind us, which alone

Was able to make the two next companies

Right witty;-though but downright fools, mere wise.

The other celebrated resort of the great wits of that time, was the Devil tavern, in Fleet-street, close to Temple-bar. Ben Jonson lived also in Bartholomew-close, where Milton afterwards lived. It is in the passage from the cloisters of Christ's Hospital into St. Bartholomew's. Aubrey gives it as a common opinion, that at the time when Jonson's father-in-law made him help him in his business of bricklayer, he worked with his own hands upon the Lincoln's-inn garden wall, which looks towards Chancery-lane, and which seems old enough to have some of his illustrious brick and mortar remaining.

Under the cloisters in Christ's Hospital (which stands in the heart of the city unknown to most persons, like a house kept invisible for young and learned eyes),* lie buried a multitude of persons of all ranks; for it was once a monastery of Grey Friars. Among them is John of Bourbon, one of the prisoners taken at the battle of Agincourt. Here also lies Thomas Burdett, ancestor of the present Sir Francis, who was put to death in the reign of Edward the Fourth, for wishing the horns of a favorite white stag which the king had killed, in the body of the person who advised him to do it. And here too (a sufficing contrast) lies Isabella, wife of Edward the Second,

She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs,

Who tore the bowels of her mangled mate.—GRAY.

Her "mate's" heart was buried with her, and placed upon her bosom! a thing that looks like the fantastic incoherence of a dream. It is well we did not know of her presence when at school; otherwise, after reading one of Shakspeare's tragedies, we should have run twice as fast round the cloisters at nighttime as we used. Camden, the "nourrice of antiquitie," received part of his education in this school; and here also, not to mention a variety of others, known in the literary world, were bred two of the best and most deep-spirited writers of the present day, whose visits to the cloisters we well remember.

In a palace on the site of Hatton-Garden, died John of Gaunt. Brook-house, at the corner of the street of that name in Holborn, was the residence of the celebrated Sir Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, the "friend of Sir Philip Sidney." In the same street, died, by a voluntary death of poison, that extraordinary person, Thomas Chatterton,

The sleepless boy, who perished in his pride.-WORDSWORTH.

He was buried in the grave-yard of the work-house in Shoelane ;-a circumstance at which one can hardly help feeling a movement of 'ndignation. Yet what could beadles and parish

It has since been unveiled, by an opening in Newgate-street † Coleridge and Lamb.